


Walk so Darkly: Fumbling in the Light

by Livana



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Angst, Angst and Humor, Canon Compliant of Sorts, Comedy, Crack?, During Canon, Edward Cullen Needs a Hug, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Humor, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Midnight Sun Parody, POV Bella Swan, POV Edward Cullen, Parody, Psychology, Twilight Parody, Vampires?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24679228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livana/pseuds/Livana
Summary: Edward recognized her. It was Cousin Barbara from Alaska, who never used to be home, but whom the family had managed to get hold of and invited, a week earlier. However, Edward had expected Barbara to ring the doorbell like a normal person.…“Let’s call Bella!” said Barbara.“No!” Edward screamed and just about managed to stop her before she stepped out of the doorway. Fortunately, she didn’t know Bella’s phone number anyway. But still.“I was only gonna say you’re a vampire,” Barbara said, fluttering her eyelashes. Edward didn’t really know if it was a joke or not. Barbara’s thoughts were all over the place.…“What would you do if I went inside to taste Bella a tad?” Barbara said.“That wasn’t a very funny joke,” Edward said and glared at her.“How do you know it’s a joke?” said Barbara and opened the door....The mosquito flew out into the night and was much faster than he had imagined her to be. Why he had believed that his cousin would only be as quick as a regular mosquito was plain idiocy, he realized. She was otherworldly fast...
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale, Carlisle Cullen/Esme Cullen, Edward Cullen/Bella Swan, Emmett Cullen/Rosalie Hale
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Walk so Darkly: Fumbling in the Light

**Author's Note:**

> I can't help but like Twilight/Midnight Sun, except for a few things, e.g.: Edward's depression is a tiny bit too romanticized, Edward's a tiny bit too stalky, and Charlie and Bella never awkwardly say they love each other. And what does it really mean to be (non-)human? What is immortality - really? Are superpowers always cool?
> 
> All in all, I take on a slightly more silly, psychological and philosophical perspective than Meyer, but I have tried my best not to contradict the canon (universe/characters/plot).
> 
> :)
> 
> ### 

#### EDWARD

Mindreading often made Edward more embarrassed than he wanted to be. He tried his best to block out the buzz of voices, in the nearly crowded school cafeteria. And especially the girls’ philosophizing; thoughts whirled in different octaves, tempos, rhythms and strength. The murmur of ideas made him wish it was Halloween all year long. Then he’d have a good reason to pull a sheet over himself. _Maybe I could pretend to be homeschooled again?_ he thought. Although the social isolation at home was actually worse than school – it did not rarely end with him quarrelling with the others in the family. _Or I could lead some kind of triple life again? Get a fake moustache and pretend_ I’m _the patriarch of the family and…_ Nah, it was exhausting keeping up the tale, and never resulted in any kind of… meaningful relationship… As if school did. Maybe he had faked it all wrong, though? Well, at least now, he didn’t really have to lie, but simply not admit to the truth…

He took a deep breath, out of pure reflex, as he sat on a chair at a table, with his four siblings.

When something felt different…?

There was a new girl at school.

 _Right. Damnit_ , Edward thought. But Bella, as he heard the classmates call her, didn’t seem to think of anything at all? But how could she then sit upright? _Has she recently died in a sitting position?_ Edward wondered as he stared at her. No, her dark brown eyes flickered and met his, and besides, she now seemed to start blushing, which meant that the second theory – that she might have a condition similar to his own – was disproved. But what was she then? He had never experienced anything like this before. _Is she_ … _an extremely humanlike robot?_ Humans invented all kinds of things nowadays. He absentmindedly squeezed an apple in his hand, and made its juice explode all over the table and his siblings.

#### BELLA

The first time Bella saw the boy with the amber eyes, she thought it was a damn good thing that she already sat down. Otherwise, she probably would have managed to trip over her own feet and got an engorged lip from falling on her face. Edward, whom the classmates said he was called, was apparently of the same age and had one of those stares which were so extraordinarily intense that it stopped time. But the feeling of being enchanted, in a terribly cozy way, was suddenly swapped with confusion as she watched him and the other four youths. The five all sat at the same table further away. Everyone was apparently related. Cullens. They ate nothing but mostly played with their food.

 _Eating disorder?_ Bella thought. _Multiple layers of makeup?_ She realized that the faces which were a bit too pale were also were a bit too acne free. _Human growth hormone?_ She looked at biggest boy – Emmett. Or well, he looked more like a grown man. He must have repeated the last grade at least three times.

Bella shook her head. Suddenly, they all felt a little pathetic.

But then compassion crept forward, like a little kitten who had seen a toe wave and just had to bite it. She sighed. Those on the other side of the school cafeteria were obviously individuals who really cared what others thought of them. Who were unsure of themselves and needed acceptance. Something extremely human.

#### EDWARD

Edward had never felt as inhuman as he did today in his biology class. All he could think of was blood. And why he couldn’t read Bella’s mind. But she was probably not a robot. She was far too real – he heard her stomach gurgle, among other things.

 _I truly require some damned help. What’s wrong with me?_ Unfortunately, medicines didn’t affect him whatsoever, and it was not easy to find professionals who could understand his situation. The best therapist, which Edward had found, was another with a condition similar to Edward’s, a few years ago. She had convinced him to have loud music in his headphones while she wrote on a whiteboard, which she had in her lap. He had sat down in a corner of the couch, thinking about what a soulless monster he was and pondered on what kinds of horrors he was capable of and that the world was better off without him, when the psychologist suddenly turned the whiteboard around.

There two gleaming, black words were written, which he didn’t quite understand. Or well, he understood them, but he did not understand what they had to do with him. He had frowned and shrugged. “Depression” was the first word. “Anxiety” was the second. The psychologist had pointed to Edward.

Edward had looked behind himself.

The first homework was to become aware of his thoughts and become more mindful. Within a week, with his inexplicably sharp memory, he had learned all about dealing with his unjustified gloom and fear, and the strategies had worked excellently until…

… Well, until when?

It was as if he had learned to be an expert at being sad and anxious again. As if the melancholy and uneasiness had crept in again, like two snotty lingonberry siblings, who had escaped from their parents at an amusement park and crudely danced limbo beneath the rope barricade, and thus escaped the ticket passage, to then run around in his funhouse of a mind. Real parasites.

The old strategies in mindfulness had just about helped him to not turn Bella into his lunch this day. _Maybe I haven’t developed properly? That the brain is fixed like a 17-year-old’s? After all, my body’s like a 17-year-old’s. Maybe I’m doomed to not be able to think like an adult. Doomed to be foolish, relative to my age._ _–_ _And doomed to live until the Earth is devoured by the Sun?! But we could live on Mars? Maybe Alice knows?_ Edward thought as he scurried through the woods and accidently swallowed a fly.

#### *

“Is a cat ‘antisocial’ for eating mice?” said Edward’s brother Emmett, on the couch.

Edward sat and tapped a single key on the piano over and over again in a jerky rhythm, in the living room. “That’s not really what I was talking about,” Edward said, switching key. It sounded a little lopsided.

“You said you thought you were ‘transbio’ because you’d rather be human?” Emmett said and Edward sensed that his sister Rosalie, who sat next to the brother, wanted to smash the entire piano. But this just made Edward dab even harder at the key while he stared Rosalie right into her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter what it’s called. I just made that word up,” Edward said, switching key without breaking eye contact.

“How typical,” said their mother Esme, who spilled garden soil all over their floor as she tried to dance to the music.

“Hey mom. You know I’ve moaned a lot about my condition, and uh, why there’s no cure?” said Edward.

His mother’s answer was a long and earthy hug. Emmett and Rosalie stood up, too, with habitual sighs, and the hug became a group hug, making Edward end up in the middle. Edward wanted to cry. But no tears came.

“I can’t even sob properly!” he screamed and writhed from their embrace.

The next second he had rushed up the stairs, sat down on the floor of his room, and regretted having done so.

#### CARLISLE

“Carlisle,” said his wife, when he came home later that evening and was about to hang his jacket up.

“Um, yes, _sweetie_?” Carlisle said to Esme, wondering what he had done. His jacket missed the hook and fell to the floor.

“Edward’s probably depressed again,” Esme replied.

“Oh,” Carlisle said, feeling relieved to know why he hadn’t been called “darling.” But then a wrinkle appeared in his forehead. “Has something happened?” He picked up the jacket from the floor.

“Do you really know that there is no cure?”

Carlisle missed the hook again. “Cure for what…Oh. Well, Aro has said that it’s as unlikely as functioning synthetic blood, unfortunately. So…uh…uh…”

“…Aro?” said Esme, and Carlisle thought her smile was peculiarly shrewd.

#### EDWARD

“Well, Edward. What kind of attire’s that?” said Edward’s mom.

“I’m a ghost,” Edward said, and peered out through the asymmetrically cut eye holes of the sheet, which he had thrown over himself.

The response became a muddy hug again. Edward yelped.

“Edward, wait!” said Carlisle suddenly when Edward was just about to close the car door. “I think I have an idea. I can’t promise anything. But maybe there’s a cure of some kind. It’s probably not quite as unlikely as I believed at first.”

Suddenly everything felt much easier in some way, Edward reflected. The melancholy and uneasiness maybe wasn’t two snotty lingonberries after all, but rather like two VIP members, who skipped the queue in front of the city’s trendiest nightclub, but then got completely smashed and threw bottles around the place, harassed the other guests and puked all over the bathroom floors… To then wake up hung-over and realize that they are part owners of the club. Now they needed to clean up the place themselves, for their own sake.

Edward’s dad needn’t say any more; Edward now comprehended what his father and sister Alice had discussed during the night; how his father’s healing ability would be combined with the sister’s future-prophesizing ability – the perfect research duo. _And_ they had already begun.

“You’re damn great!” he said and flew up for a hug.

With a groan, Carlisle breathed out the air which was squeezed out of him – air he was actually had been meaning to use for talking. Then his sister Alice, who stood next to him, received the same treatment. Rosalie also became ravenous for hugs, and the whole family had some kind of hugging festivity.

“Are you the one who’s making me feel so good?” said Edward, looking at his brother Jasper.

Jasper, who was currently hugging Alice, looked at Edward and shrugged. Jasper had obviously not been involved in supernaturally mixing with his mood. _How mysterious._ Jasper had done this before to help, but which he, on the other hand, could only manage to keep up for so long… Edward threw off the sheet into the grass. It was quite brownish anyway and the day wasn’t too bad either. The urchins at school were allowed to think whatever they wanted about his appearance.

#### *

“So, you’re not having any kind of lesson right now, Edward?”

“Hmm, yes, I do,” Edward said without looking up at the human who had arrived, but he continued to dig, with his bare hands, into the warm flowerbed. He felt so inspired today. Like a new person. _Begone, weeds!_

“So, it’s a lab thing you’re doing yourself, or something?” said his principal.

“No,” Edward said, and regretted doing so. It would have been a perfect lie. _Damn it._

The principal looked around. They were alone in the schoolyard. The principal crouched down, in level with Edward. “Edward, if there’s something you wanna talk about, I’m right here. Whether it’s classmates, family problems or, uh, learning difficulties…?”

Edward looked up. “Girl trouble?”

“Ehhh, well, noo… In that case, maybe you should talk to the school counselor,” said the principal, and slightly cleared the throat. “However, I generally think that you should try exposing yourself to the things you are afraid of, but which are truly harmless, like girls… and… uh, not stand and dig into flowerbeds instead. Unless you love digging into flowerbeds, of course. But you need to do the right amount of digging, too, and not forget your human needs…Yeah, you get what I mean?”

Edward sighed heavily, out of pure habit. He had wished that the principal had just been bothered by his question and left. Or that the principal basically would just threaten him that he would not be able to get a job later if he did not have high enough grades. As if he would be affected by that. Instead, the principal stood here and was… really nice. But also completely ignorant. _Idiot._

Edward stood up and almost forgot to wipe off the wet soil onto his pants.

“Alright then, I’ve got a biology lesson soon. I’ll go there,” Edward said. He could no longer suffer listening to the principal, although much of it resembled the things his psychologist had said before, in a way.

“Oh, that’s great,” said the principal, a little surprised, thumbing up. “And I believe in you, Edward! You can do this!”

“Thank you,” Edward said, contemplating an escape route which would end at home.

But he only got two flies in his eye before he turned around and ran towards the school building again. Maybe the principal was right – about something…?

#### BELLA

 _Maybe Edward has some kind of extreme mutation_ – _unless he’s an alien_ , Bella thought. After all, anorexia, cosmetics or medication could definitely not explain what he was. Firstly, his eyes could change color. Secondly, his skin was ice cold. Thirdly, he seemed to have super hearing. So, she wondered if his genes were aware of established concepts, such as chemistry and physics. Fourthly and fifthly he was so fast and strong so… he was probably the reason why she was not completely crushed by a car in the school parking lot today. _Yeah, superman or something. Or maybe I’ve dreamed it all up._

_… Got a psychosis? Maybe I didn’t move to my dad in cloudy Forks at all?!_

“Dad?” Bella got up from the bed and opened the door. “Are you there?”

“Hmm? What is it, Bells?” said Bella’s dad. She heard the TV sound being reduced, then footsteps approaching, and then she saw his face look up at the gap by the stairs.

 _Phew,_ one _thing seems correct so far_ … “How do you know if… if…,” she began.

“Yeah…?” he said, and raised his eyebrows.

“…If you’re hallucinating?” she sprouted out, and immediately felt truly stupid.

“Hmm… Right… Good question. I don’t really think you know if you do. Most people don’t, anyway.” He scratched his head.

“Okay?” said Bella, and became both anxious and relieved at the same time.

“Has anything happened…? Well, besides the trip to the hospital and everything? Are the painkillers having side effects...?”

Bella wanted to say “no” and just go back to her room, but she was completely flooded with emotions and felt tears burn instead.

“I love you, dad!” she heard herself say and then she felt the flush burn her face. She half regretted speaking. She had never been so personal with the old man.

She saw that her dad got some pinkish hue in his face as well, looked away a bit and mumbled, “You sure it isn't the painkillers talking, or something?”

“No,” Bella snorted. “Um. Or I don’t think so? But it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, I see… But, uh, I love you too, Bella.” He looked her straight in the eye. His dark brown eyes were like a mirror image.

Then they both started weeping at the same time, met in the middle of the stairs and hugged.

“Holy crow, what if you had died today? You klutz,” her father said, and squeezed her so hard that she lost her breath.

“Everything’s your fault!” Bella said when she could draw air into her lungs again. “One reason why I almost got run over was because I’d stopped to inspect my wheels. You had put on snow chains on my tires as a surprise. But then I failed to notice that Tyler skid around on the ice and almost into me!”

“Oh no, is that true? What have I done…?” said her father, and sounded as if his throat had tightened.

“I’m exaggerating, Dad,” Bella said, and wiped the snot onto her sleeve. “It wasn’t your fault. Come on, let’s watch some TV.”

#### EDWARD

Edward sat, hoping that no meteor was on a collision course towards Bella, when his thoughts were interrupted. _Have I become schizophrenic?_ he thought instead. He had definitely not fallen asleep and started dreaming, even though it was night – that would be pure wishful thinking. _Or do we have ghosts?_ Edward didn’t really believe in ghosts. But… sometimes one’s beliefs had nothing to do with reality… He turned the music player off.

“Rosalie, is it you who’re thinking?” Edward called down the stairs.

Rosalie continued thumping with the hammer. The pounding sounded like a death metal drum solo with double bass drums. She was repairing a wall which she had wrecked herself the day before, when Edward had been plonking the piano, and it would’ve only taken a minute to finish, if it hadn’t been for that she had to pause once in a while to not cause any fire from the friction when she sawed the wooden planks too quickly. Edward wished that the sister could’ve been outdoors and built a new car or something. There was only so much noise you could shut out with Debussy.

Edward ran down the stairs and took the hammer from Rosalie in less than a second.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” said the sister, and reached for the hammer.

“Are you thinking?” Edward kept it sufficiently far away so Rosalie didn’t reach.

Rosalie said she was always thinking, but Edward questioned that. Rosalie just stared at Edward as an answer and jerked the tool away from him. But Edward heard that Rosalie really wanted to make an even bigger hole in the wall.

“… Sorry. But um, if it isn’t you who’re thinking, then… we either have ghosts or I’ve gone mad.”

“Oh… That doesn’t sound very good,” Rosalie said, and Edward knew that she thought the second option was the most likely. Rosalie raised her arm to start hammering again, because she didn’t really know what to do about it.

But then Edward heard a voice, from Rosalie’s direction, like the one he had heard before:

 _“Where am I at?_ What _am I?”_

Edward looked at her. _It could hardly be Rosalie who’s being this existential._

And it seemed to have something to do with… a mosquito? It sat on his sister’s neck and tried, in vain, to pierce a hole into her skin with its trunk. _Can I read insect minds all of a sudden?_ Bella was, indeed, the exception among people. Perhaps, in the opposite way, there were exceptions among creepy-crawlies? He looked at Rosalie anyway and she seemed to get into a better mood. She glanced back flatteredly – she thought he was looking at her new necklace.

Then Alice came into the room, as well. “Can mosquitoes make decisions…?” she said, narrowing her eyes as if she had a migraine attack. Edward recognized the expression – it was similar to what a substitute teacher once had made at school, when Edward had gone there with his sheets pulled over himself and insisted that it was his white vestment which he had every right to wear because of his religious freedom.

Edward wandered into Alice’s head. Alice had been trying to predict the future of this mosquito. But the mosquito seemed to constantly change its decisions. The flickering images she saw in front of her would’ve given any human being an epileptic seizure.

The mosquito now flew away with its collapsed nose in a wispy pattern and suddenly expanded in seconds. The shape was now like a human shape instead, which landed with a belly flopping thump on the floor in a probably uncomfortable position. When the individual subsequently had turned, maroon eyes looked up at the trio. They looked back at the creature where she lay on the floor. And they recognized her. It was Cousin Barbara from Alaska, who never used to be home, but whom the family had managed to get hold of and invited, a week earlier.

Maybe to cheer up Edward a little. However, Edward had expected Barbara to ring the doorbell like a normal person.

“My superpower is shape shifting!” she said, happily and butt naked as she heaved herself up into a sitting position. “But, uh, so far I can only shift into a mosquito, it seems. And that seems to affect my intelligence considerably, too,” she said thoughtfully, and massaged her nose.

#### *

“It sounds more like a disadvantage than an advantage to become a mosquito. What if someone whacks you? Can you recover from that?” Edward said in Barbara’s recreational vehicle, which was parked awry on the driveway. His cousin was, in a way, a not completely unpleasant person for Edward to hang out with (compared to what Alice felt); she usually said directly what she thought. And now she was dressed as well. In a worn-out, discolored jumpsuit.

“Yes, I have been flattened many times! Last time, it took only a week until I was my usual self again,” Barbara said, and trimmed another stencil, where she squatted on the floor.

“It sounds… like a pretty long time to recover? As if you’re really trying to find something positive in your ‘superpower’ when there really is none? It’s alright, Barb, sometimes you don’t get very cool strengths – it’s not always fun to be able to read minds for example…”

“Come on, Eddie dear, you can’t deliberately stop mindreading. So, you have to, like, accept the situation. Look at it from the bright side.”

“So… you mean that _you_ can’t control when to become a mosquito or not…?”

“Eh… no.”

“What? Wow. But do you know your triggers, then?”

“Alas, nope. Neither what makes me shift into a mosquito, nor what changes me back to my normal self again. If this is my ‘normal’ self…? Well, it would possibly be an advantage, anyway, knowing the trigger. Maybe I’ll figure it out one day.”

“Huh,” Edward suddenly had sympathy for the cousin.”Maybe we should keep a, um, mosquito log book?”

“ _Damn_ , you’re smart, Eddie! I hadn’t even thought about that! Mental note to self. – Oh, here in my mental note pad I have lots of items which I haven’t even started with. Amazing that we have these mental abilities to remember so much. The only crux is how to remember reminding yourself of the reminders too… Regardless, I think people would pay to become vamp – uh, _like us_. Not that we have any real use of money. And Aro would never agree to us advertizing, even if it was nonprofit. He loves being secretly elite, that rogue… – Uh, what were we talking about? Right. So, until we know the mosquito trigger, I _have_ to try finding something positive about being a mosquito, otherwise… anyone would just be _distraught_ – and it is _so tedious_ to be miserable! You can’t even bawl properly.”

“Um, true. You do indeed have a point…”

Although the content of Barbara’s drivel rapidly changed, she reminded him of what his psychologist had said. As well as the principal. It made him relax a bit, in any case, where he sat down squeezed at the folding dining table, which only seemed to work well as an armrest.

“Let’s call Bella!” said Barbara quite suddenly and stumbled over a pile of stencils and cans of spray paint. It rattled and paper flew everywhere.

“No!” Edward screamed, flipped the table top and just about managed to stop her before she stepped out of the doorway. Fortunately, she didn’t know Bella’s phone number anyway. But still.

“I was only gonna say you’re a vampire,” Barbara said, fluttering her eyelashes. Edward didn’t really know if it was a joke or not. Barbara’s thoughts were all over the place.

“Such a funny joke. _Ha ha ha_ ,” he said monotonously, and a dozen expressions slid across his face in a brief moment. He continued to hold his arm in the way of the doorway so that she couldn’t get to the phone in the hallway. “Barb, first of all, it’s in the middle of the night. And secondly, you can’t joke about stuff like that, anywhere and whenever. You don’t know who’s listening…,” he whispered as quietly as he could, automatically.

“ _Meh_ ,” Barbara said, and rolled her eyes. “Shouldn’t Alice be able to predict if someone would listen?”

“If it only were that simple. Maybe if you made more thoughtful decisions…”

“Hmm. Well, yes, maybe. You are probably right. I’m a little impulsive,” Barbara said, and chuckled. “ _Oh!_ I know, _let’s go there_!”

“Huh? To Bella? Now?” Edward said, already knowing the answer. “No! We can’t! That’s too much of a risk,” Edward said dramatically. He looked up at the ceiling and hung his arms.

“But I really _wanna_ go there _now_!” said Barbara and jumped on the spot.

“Sometimes you don’t always get what you want! Calm yourself down!” said Edward, and thought that he spit the words out a little too aggressively.

“I don’t know if I can,” Barbara said, and narrowed her eyes. “ _Oh, no_ …,” she then gasped, opened her eyes fully and suddenly looked a little scared. “I can feel it again in my body now. Nothing’s happening…”

Edward didn’t really know what she meant by what she said. It sounded like a paradox. Then his cousin began to vibrate throughout her body. Edward creased his eyebrows as she wrinkled her entire face and grit her teeth. And suddenly…

…she rapidly shrunk.

She was found later by Edward inside the jumpsuit, which had fallen into a pile on the floor.

#### *

“Okay, so it seems like you become a mosquito when you get bored and just can’t contain yourself?” said Edward when Barbara was her usual self again. “Besides…,” he said slowly, “…is it actually an excellent disguise if you wanna be outside when it’s sunny…”

“Right, _that’s_ how I got into your place. I wanted to be super smart and get myself from my RV to your house and visit, without being detected. Who moaned about ‘people listening’ again? You know that there are satellites that take pictures and shit.”

“Look, it’s less than two meters between the RV and the front door. You could’ve worn a wide brim hat and maybe a scarf – _if_ it’d been sunny. Also turning back unexpectedly from your mosquito shape leaves you nude…? Which is another problem…”

“…Well, alright. That’s true. But let’s get to Bella now, before I’ll turn into a mosquito again. Too many shapeshifts in a short amount of time make me breakdown nervously.”

“… Do we have to?”

But his cousin was already at the wheel and accelerated her PMS, Perfect Mobile Sunscreen, which she called her trailer. Edward nearly grabbed the wheel to steer them right down the ditch, but he forced himself to abstain. It would be a dumb idea if the scrap of an RV would explode and they would have to get out of the wreck. _That_ would’ve been a nice satellite picture.

#### *

“But Alice saw you and Bella going out! Doesn’t it feel maddening to carry such a heavy secret day in and day out…?” said Barbara, where they had parked a few meters from Bella’s house. “You should just tell Bella the truth. I know I would’ve liked doing that. Damn, how nice wouldn’t it be if all people could just be vamp – I mean, like _us_ – instead. Then you could just be honest and not make up tales all the time. Do you know how much brain space lies take compared to truths? No, not me either. But much more than just the truth I can imagine. What if my brain was a computer, you know. If a truth was a kilobyte, then a lie would also be at least a kilobyte, and then…”

Edward realized that the feeling he sensed was familiar to his previous notion of sleepiness. Was this why she had been invited? She didn’t really enliven him at the moment, but she rather nearly rocked him to sleep with her words and drained him of energy as if she were…

“Wait,” she said all of a sudden. “ _Right_ … What if we could kidnap Aro? Alice should be able to foresee a perfect kidnapping plan and Jasper could use his emotional powers to make Aro change his mind and opinions so they match our? We should never negotiate with _terrorists_ like Aro – we should stand up for ourselves! Soon, it won’t be possible to hide anyway with all the technology humans invent – I’ve got spotlight phobia. And you should get a completely new name when you move to Alaska next time – you can’t just use gaslighting easily when it comes to databases. Our names are probably in there somewhere. And if all people became like _us_ , it would be really environmentally friendly – we only drink a little blood once in a while, compared to humans who–”

“–Look, I don’t even understand Alice’s vision with me and Bella. Why would Bella and I even go out? I don’t understand _if_ Bella likes me, or _why_ she would like me!” said Edward just to make Barbara stop blathering. He had tried to keep her monologuing for as long as possible, so she wouldn’t do anything stupid. But there were certain limits, and she seemed pretty harmless, even though she didn’t seem to be able to control her power properly.

“… Huh?” Barbara said as Edward pushed past her and sat down at the wheel. She sat on the floor and spray painted her hundredth figure on a cabinet door in the RV, which he had encouraged her to do. As a distraction.

“Well, I can’t read her mind…,” he said, and shrugged. He wanted to go home now. It smelled awful from the paint as well and Edward had held his breath until now, when he had inhaled some air to communicate with the cousin. “And no, Bella’s not a robot,” he answered Barbara’s thoughts. “But there’s a wild age gap between me and her anyway…,” Edward continued to prattle. He looked for the car key.

“So what, girls _like_ experienced men!” Barbara said, dangling the key on an index finger.

“Uh, I don’t feel like an ‘experienced man’. I feel like a… lingonberry,” Edward said, and reached for the key. He began to run out of air in his lungs again.

“Yes, but that’s _exactly_ what you are. A brat. So why are you squabbling?” Barbara said, and leaned farther away so that he couldn’t reach, while thinking they were almost out of gasoline anyway.

Edward now realized why Rosalie had punched a hole in the wall earlier. “ _You’re_ squabbling!” was all Edward managed to grunt. He hit the car horn and jumped from the sound.

His cousin rolled her eyes again. “What would you do if I shifted into a mosquito again and went inside to taste Bella a tad?” she said, got up and started walking towards the door.

“That wasn’t a very funny joke, actually,” Edward said after another breath which he regretted. He stood up and glared at her.

“How do you know it’s a _joke_?” said Barbara, squinting her eyes. She opened the door.

He didn’t really know. He ran forward, to block the doorway with his arm again – but also to lean out a little to breathe the fresh air. “ _Hgnnfgf_ ,” he said soon after. “That you have _sick_ fantasies is one thing. But why try putting them into practice? Do you really have no impulse control?” Edward now truly wanted Barbara to shapeshift again so he could put his own imagination into action. _Smack her._

“But don’t you get it, Eddie? I just wanna help you! Accept who you are, you know. Imagine what a good, protective boyfriend you could be to Bella. Women usually _love_ that kind of thing, and I don’t think Bella’s an exception…,” Barbara said. Her eyes sparkled as she wrapped a blonde strand of hair around her finger (which made the car key embed in the hair) and her eyebrows danced meaningfully in her forehead.

Edward drew a deep sigh and shook his head, “Please, don’t…”

But Barbara had already begun to shake.

#### *

Edward’s arm, across a small part of the entryway, didn’t stop the mosquito from flying over it and out into the night. Nor did her jumpsuit succeed in slowing her down – she had managed to dodge it completely. And his cousin was much faster than he had imagined her to be. Why he had believed that she would only be as quick as a regular mosquito was plain idiocy, he realized. She was now otherworldly fast – in less than a nanosecond she had disappeared and he hadn’t even had enough time to see where. But he had an idea of where. He just about realized that he needed to check the road, before he started rushing to Bella’s house, to see that no people would be around and see _him_ sprinting in superhuman speed, despite the darkness.

But there were people out – he nearly overlooked it. _Damn dog owners_ , Edward thought, put on a smile and walked in the most normal pace he could manage, towards the house. He swung a little too much with his arms, he realized, when he was almost there, and stopped to look at the house numbers around him. Pretended he didn’t really know where he was going yet. He did not know if he dared to enter Bella’s driveway, because he perceived that Bella’s father made a late night sandwich in the kitchen. Maybe would notice him.

“Did you get lost in the middle of the night, young man?” said a man much younger than Edward, but who, without haste but with a cane, approached Edward.

“No, or well yes, or I have really poor eyesight. What house number is this?” said Edward, regretting everything he said.

It took at least a minute of discussion about aging, myopia, house numbers and dogs before the old man left with his barking poodle, which Edward thought smelled too much of a cur, but much better than the RV. Edward, meanwhile, was in complete panic, and could not breathe, in any way, to calm his heartbeat – he had none. Instead, he told himself that Barbara didn’t do anything in Bella’s room at all.

 _… Or?_ It was less than a day since his cousin had tried to pierce his sister’s skin. Damned dumbass. The mosquito shape “ _seems to affect my intelligence considerably, too_ ,” her words echoed in his head. Alright, Barbara may have forgotten that everything was going to be a joke and would perhaps taste Bella indeed. But if she did, it certainly wasn’t dangerous. It would only result in a mosquito bite. No big deal.

… _Or?_ What if Barbara wasn’t a regular mosquito? She didn’t fly at the speed of a regular mosquito. Could his cousin in mosquito shape accidently turn Bella into a…?

_Fucking hell…_

When the chatterbox of a man and its loyal animal companion was out of sight, Edward just about flew up to Bella’s window and peeked in, hanging upside-down from the roof. And saw, through the yellow curtain, his cousin sitting on Bella’s neck. _She might just be sitting there, without having done anything yet?!_ _… But what if she expands again, au naturel, and on top of... I can’t let that happen!_ He did everything to not tear up the window but pried it open as quickly but quietly as he could. But it rasped slightly. He grimaced. Had Bella woken up? No, she just mumbled something and turned around in her sleep a little. He climbed in and raised his hand. He was just about to smack Barbara when he realized he couldn’t do it that way. Instead, he lowered his hand to gently remove the cousin…

But that’s when he saw it. The pinhole in Bella’s skin. Barbara who was full of…

_Blood…_

A small voice inside of him roared that the whole situation was _very_ troublesome. And embarrassing. He couldn’t protect Bella at all. Not even against a mosquito. And now she might become like _him_. _Or a mosquito…?_

He solidified and just stared in front of him like a statue. At the place, where he was there and then, a small part of his brain created an anti-memory technique – instead of a memory palace, all of the sensations which he, so far, had registered that night would just be thrown here and there, across his head, like in a memory limbo. It did not have to be cataloged in a good way at all. And why he was in Bella’s room would be explained with a spice of cognitive dissonance: he must have chosen to be there. He might have just wanted to see Bella’s face, or watch out for meteors, or something.

 _Yes, that’s it_ , Edward thought as an insect flew past him into the fresh air.

#### *

_Becoming human again might perhaps be a stupid idea?_ Edward thought as he drove past a red light. Away from Port Angeles where Bella had hung out with some classmates but got lost in an alley, alone. Away from the gang with the sociopath Wallace in the lead. Regardless, it was thanks to Edward’s inexplicable powers, given by his condition, which caused Bella not to die, or to be seriously injured, at least twice by now.

 _Because of_ the condition, _almost_ only once. It undoubtedly began to have more advantages than disadvantages. _Hmm._ Carlisle and Alice could probably take a break in the cure experiment. (Rosalie might be mad that Edward backpedaled. Oh, well…)

And he didn’t feel that sad that anymore, anyway. The principal seemed to be right? Edward managed more than what he had believed. He could control his worst impulses, and especially compared to… other people which he didn’t want to remember. At the same time Bella was some mysterious source of energy. Endorphins, the biology teacher might say, not knowing that Edward was a…

“Vampire,” Bella murmured, as if to herself. As if she bit a corner of the word and slowly chewed on it. She scratched her neck a little, a bit distracted, in the seat next him. Edward tried not to look and immediately felt grouchier, without really knowing why. Probably because he didn’t like the expression. She had figured it out on her own and just confronted him. He had not admitted to it, but neither denied that he was a…

“But, how do you really know you’re a ‘vampire’? Who told you that?” said Bella.

“Wha…?” said Edward, accelerated the car and forgot which mood he was supposed to be in.

“Right, well. Who was the first vampire, you know? And who, like, said to that vampire person, ‘Listen up, you, you’re a vampire by the way!’ How do you know that the person, who apparently _knew_ that and said that, was _credible_? Was it some… _god_ , or something? And how do you even know it was a ‘god’?”

“Uh…” He couldn’t deny it was a good question. Aro, their own chief of police of sorts, had said it, but he was definitely no god. Although Aro himself seemed to believe it sometimes. “I guess we simply… just assumed it? Because of that fact… uh, that we like human blood, you know. And those who like that are called–”

“–But maybe you _are_ not even a ‘vampire’? But a human, with uh, vampiric traits, or something, whatever that it is… Like, do you have to label yourself? That you _are_ something rather than _having_ something?” said Bella. “And can only humans become vampires? No other animals, or like… plants? Can you read other animals’ thoughts by the way? Like apes? Have you tried?”

Edward thought the questions were chaotic. But even though he had heard messier questions before, he did not know what to say and just looked at her, while thinking of mosquitoes without wanting to know why. What more exciting things went on in Bella’s head?

“Did you know that Jessica at school thinks mean things about you?” he then blurted out.

“Did you know that you frighten poor hares in the forest completely unnecessarily when you drive this fast?” Bella said, furrowed her brow and crossed her arms.

Edward slowed the car down, slightly, while thinking he might’ve also said something wrong. _Right, context._ “Sorry. I didn’t know what to say. I started thinking about something else… And I really meant to say that Angela is a really nice person compared to Jessica. You should spend more time with her.” _And not with me_ , Edward then thought and again felt the grumpiness creeping. No, the melancholy and uneasiness were not just as lingonberries or VIP members. They were a damned mosquito bite that you just wanted to scratch on but which only got worse when you did. But damn how nice it felt in the moment.

“Uh, okay?” Bella just said, and her arms relaxed a little.

She rubbed her neck a little, nonchalantly and thoughtfully. It made him really tense. He looked at the road again and swallowed. And wondered how it came about that he could produce saliva but not tears. It made him confusedly annoyed. Or annoyingly confused. Some of them. Maybe both.

They sat silently for a while. Then Bella began fidgeting and looking Edward’s way, now and then. He saw it in the corner of his eye. After a minute, she said, completely red in the face:

“Are there unicorns, too?”

#### *

Edward got a little bad conscience. Bella trembled as he held her warm hand when they walked outdoors, away from the dance floor, at prom. He couldn’t help but ask if he scared her.

“No, um… actually, you’re a little cold. But I like freezing!” she said as her teeth chattered. Her face became entirely pink while her lips were completely purple.

Their different temperatures were perhaps a problem. Albeit a small problem. But still.

 _Speaking of trouble…?_ Edward thought that he saw something odd in the corner of his eye, quickly looked away from Bella’s face, and turned his own upwards, towards the night sky. He flinched – ready to shield her… only to realize he was watching the moon – not a meteor. He allowed his muscles to relax a bit and forced himself to think of something else. Anything. _Something positive?_

Edward instead thought of Alice's several visions of the future, concerning him and Bella.

In one of them, he had become human again. The advantage was that he would definitely not feel like a beast anymore, who might uncontrollably crave blood when he least expected it. It was a strange mirror image which Alice had given him, where he could see himself with watery, green eyes, wrinkles and a white beard, where Bella next to him – gray-haired and sitting with a hunched back, in a wheelchair – would laugh so loudly at him accidentally passing gas so her dentures flew out.

In another vision, Bella would become like him. The advantage was that she was a jinxed oaf where he would constantly have to be a bodyguard – at best. The last time had been truly stressful with a human munching nomad, who had abducted Bella and it had only ended with her at the hospital with a broken leg and blood loss. The family had only meant to play some baseball with her.

While Edward concentrated hard on only thinking about the benefits of both versions, there was something else that, despite his efforts, made him jittery.

“Wait, what was that?” said Edward suddenly. He listened intently. There was a familiar sound near Bella.

“What?” said Bella.

Without really thinking about what he was doing, he let go of Bella’s hand and clapped his hands together with a bang. Bella looked at him, her eyes wide. The flattened mosquito was revealed when he opened his hands. He flicked it off from the palm of his hand where it had got stuck, and felt irrationally angry. It left a red dot, and he thought of lingonberries.

“Hmm,” he said. “I don’t know why I did that. Maybe I’m jealous?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read! :D


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